This Rotten World | Book 4 | Winter of Blood

by Morris, Jacy

  As everyone appeared, they heard the groans of the dead in the darkness behind them.

  "Head down that aisle," Tejada said softly, pointing in a direction that headed away from their entry point. They moved smoothly through the aisles, avoiding stepping on anything that could give away their position. They passed a rack of random junk, the words "As Seen on TV" highlighted in a red bubble. Then they moved through rows of houseware type items, garbage cans, pots and pans, bedding. Some more blankets would be nice. But they had to keep moving. They reached the end of this aisle and turned left, passing past a stack of multicolored bouncy balls confined in place by a black metal cage, and then they were in the garden area. Soft light filtered in from the snowy outside world, and they found a set of glass double doors just past a row of two check-out lanes. As they moved through the lanes, Walt reached out and pocketed a couple of stray candy items.

  They reached the sliding glass doors, shocked to find them intact. They ignored the double doors and headed for a single glass doorway off to the side. When Allen went to push it open, nothing happened. It rattled in its frame, locked.

  "You want us to shoot out the glass?" Allen asked.

  Tejada thought about it for a moment. "Fuck it," he said.

  Allen stepped back and fired a couple of suppressed rounds through the glass. It shattered, the sound of broken glass echoing throughout the building. The sound was greeted by the moans of the dead. One by one, the soldiers crawled through the bottom of the broken door, underneath the metal bar that crossed its middle and acted as a door handle.

  They had made it through the store and into the frigid morning air. More pockets of dead greeted them. How long had they taken? 5 minutes? 10? As adrenaline dumped into Walt's body, time seemed to dilate. Every step seemed to be in slow-motion.

  He scanned the parking lot, spotting movement all around. There, a black-haired Annie with an ear hanging by a flap of skin rounded the back of a delivery truck. To his right, an Annie with broken legs crawled across the concrete, its teeth gnashing as it pulled itself through the snow like a snow-plow constructed of flesh and bone.

  "Move, move, move," Tejada said, modulating his voice perfectly so it would only reach their ears. For his part, Walt didn't think he would be able to utter two syllables without screaming them out loud in fear.

  They rushed through the parking lot, popping skulls as they went. Rudy lagged behind, and Walt, concerned for the big man, kept pace with him. "You got this," he said. Rudy, too exhausted, sweat pouring from his face, gave him a thankful glance, but he said nothing. His breath was too short to spare for words.

  Walt's rifle clicked empty, and his hands, normally so sure and so steady, seemed to have a mind of their own as he fumbled in his jacket for another magazine. In front of him, an Annie lurched from behind a black SUV. Its cold hands touched his face, and in that split second, he forgot about the bowling ball hanging from his back, and he continued to try and grab a magazine out of the pocket of his tactical vest.

  His mouth opened wide to scream in anticipated pain, and then the Annie's head exploded, brains splattering the side of the SUV and his face. He stood shocked, trying to understand what had just happened. He jumped as Rudy slapped him on the shoulder, smoke coiling up from the barrel of his rifle, and then they moved forward, the realization that he had almost died slowly dawning on him.

  That could have been it. I could have died right there. Rudy had saved him. He didn't have time to dwell on it as they struggled up a hill, leaving the big store behind them. He finally managed to slam home another magazine. He felt exhaustion overtaking him now. His body had burned through its supply of adrenaline, and he felt weak and shaky. Climbing the hill in front of them left him gassed.

  Now they just had to get back to the Nike compound. That was the easy part.

  ****

  Tejada marched steadily down the road, moving swiftly, but not quickly. The men at the back end were exhausted. Their steps were heavy, their feet falling hard. But they had to keep moving. To stop in the open was death. They had lost a good amount of the dead inside the Fred Meyer. Unfortunately, that also meant that getting back in was going to be quite a bitch. There was a lot of stuff in there. Shoes, blankets, camping gear–– all stuff they would need once they left the Nike compound.

  This had been a reconnaissance run. Now that he had a better idea of the layout, he would know how to divide the labor when they left. He would know where to send who. But first, they had to get back in the compound, get rested, get ready. He walked quickly across a four-lane road. He didn't like being out in the open like this. You could see for a half-mile in either direction, and walking down the middle of the road meant alerting a hundred Annies to your location.

  They made it across the street, Tejada keeping his eyes on everything, the ground, his men, the Annies slowly tightening like a noose. They passed through a McDonald's parking lot, keeping wide of the abandoned cars. He had seen several Annies pop up from behind cars, almost as if they were hiding. But that was nonsense. Annies didn't think. It just seemed that way to him sometimes.

  Maybe he was getting paranoid in his old age. He had been feeling his years recently. His hip ached with pain. He had never injured it, so there shouldn't be any problem, but he felt it. It was tight and sore after any sort of physical activity. Maybe it was just the cold weather, or maybe it was just the end of youth. They zigged and zagged their way through the backside of office parks, keeping out of sight of the road as much as they could. They moved northwest, heading towards the wall of the Nike compound.

  It had all been a ruse, getting supplies, buying themselves some more time. Winter was a bitch. Cold weather, a lack of supplies, these were death sentences for his men. Damn the snows. If they had held off for another two weeks, he and his men would have been on their way. They could have shaken hands with the Nike folks, smiled, and waved goodbye. But the snows had come, locking them in place. For a while, he had been hopeful that they could coexist with the Nike folk, but he had heard the rumblings.

  While none of his men had been fully accepted by the Nike residents, Amanda had made some progress. She was likeable, cheery, and everyone seemed to gravitate towards her. Her smile could loosen lips that Tejada's violence never could.

  He remembered when she had come to him last week, her eyes downcast and worry on her face. "What is it?" he asked, immediately sensing that something was wrong. He had seen that look on the faces of hundreds of raw, green soldiers over the years. It was a face that said, "I got some bad news, but I'm scared shitless about how you're going to react."

  She wrung her hands, and he thought he was going to have to pry it from her. But then she found her words. "They're going to kill us."

  He had wondered and hypothesized, but to hear the words actually spoken out loud by someone other than himself had taken him aback. "Are you sure?" he asked.

  Amanda had been sure. She had heard it from Nathan, himself an outcast among the Nike people. He had dared to stand up to Diana. She was the queen bee, every bit as manipulative as her exiled father. Tejada had made the decision then and there. They had to leave. Despite the snow. Despite the cold. They had to get a move on, or the denizens of Nike would come after them.

  He didn't think it was because of the resources. He didn't think it was because they were scared of the soldiers. They would come after them because Diana was in charge, and she hadn't forgiven them for exiling her father. She was flighty that one. To hear Allen tell it, she had all but begged him to have her father removed. Either she had some emotional issues, or she was trying to consolidate power like a third-world dictator plotting the demise of her political rivals.

  The frustrating part was that he and his men had absolutely no designs on the Nike campus. At one point, he had thought maybe they could stay there and work together to build some sort of future, but that was not to be the case, not with Diana in charge.

  He shook the thoughts from his head and cursed himself f
or not staying in the moment. A lapse of thought in the field could lead to disaster. Was his mind going as well as his hip? Fuck getting old.

  They pushed through some underbrush behind an office building, and Tejada took a look around to see that all of his men were present. Their breath came from their mouths in big white clouds, and snow fell all around them. He could see shapes moving in the distance behind them, while ahead of him, he could see the dead ringing the wall of the Nike compound. They had made it.

  "Send it up," he told Day. Day rummaged around in his pack and pulled out a flare gun. He loaded it, aimed it in the air, and with a weak pop, it sent a flare up into the sky. It hung there, like a small, red sun against a gray sky.

  "Let's move," Tejada said. "Make sure you're fully loaded. We want to hit that wall at a run and not look back.

  Now it was time for Amanda to do her part.

  Chapter 2: Lowering the Drawbridge

  Amanda had stayed behind, not because she didn't want to go with the others, but because Tejada had asked her to. He didn't trust the Nike people to do their job. She couldn't blame him. She still remembered Nathan pulling her to the side in one of the Nike buildings, the look on his face, the words that came from his mouth. "They're going to kill them all."

  She didn't know if she and Rudy were included in that statement. The Nike people didn't treat her any differently than they did one of their own. But Rudy was a different story. He wasn't the type to engender kindness. Though he had changed since they first met, he lacked the charisma that would make a stranger want to strike up a conversation with him. She couldn't take that chance. For a while, she had wanted to stay here, but Diana was making that impossible.

  As she thought of the woman, Diana appeared from the nearest building. Amanda was busy overseeing the hauling of the ramp to the other side of the compound.

  "Stop!" Diana called, and Amanda's stomach dropped.

  The men dropped the ramp and turned to see what Diana wanted.

  "What are you doing?" Amanda asked.

  Diana didn't even spare her a glance. She walked up to the group of men that had volunteered to help carry the ramp, and she said, "You're needed elsewhere. We have too many of the dead on the east wall. I need you to clear them out."

  The men all looked at each other. They knew what Diana was doing, and say what you will about the people living on the campus, but at least they hesitated before following Diana's command.

  "This is bullshit!" Amanda shouted.

  "We have to clear the wall," Diana said, ending all argument.

  She turned and walked away, the men following her, their rifles held in their hands. They looked over their shoulders, and Amanda could see how conflicted some of them were, but you didn't cross Diana. That much was obvious. She had her own hand-picked goon squad, and she had seen more than one of the Nike people appear in the morning walking gingerly, their faces covered in bruises.

  She turned to the ramp and walked over to it. She pulled on it, but it wouldn't budge, not even an inch. It was too heavy for her by herself. She looked around for anything that she could use to help drag the ramp, but she was alone. Snow accumulated on the ramp as she stood there thinking.

  Panic began to well up in her chest, and she paced back and forth in the snow. She threw back her head and screamed, "Help!" The only answer was the soft moan of the dead at the wall and the soft rasp of snowflakes as they settled to the ground. Then she heard a hum, low, electric. She waited patiently, and then she saw him, Nathan, his glasses taped together, his face perpetually swollen. He didn't give a fuck about beatings, and he seemed to be the only one of Diana's followers that voiced his actual opinion. Fresh bruises covered his cheek. He bounced along the campus grounds in an electric golf cart.

  When he smiled at her, she saw that he had lost a few more teeth. "Left you alone, did they?"

  She didn't know what to say. Her body spoke for her as tears came to her eyes.

  "Hey, hey, there's no call for that. We got this." He pulled the cart in front of the ramp. With a chain, he secured the metal and wood monstrosity to the back of the cart. He stepped on the gas, and Amanda's heart dropped. The ramp moved, but it moved so slowly that she knew they were going to be pushing it to get it to the designated spot by the time Rudy and the others appeared.

  "Here, you drive," Nathan said.

  Amanda hopped into the driver seat of the cart, and Nathan went to stand behind the ramp. As she accelerated, she felt the golf cart's engine strain at the weight. Nathan pushed the ramp, and in this way, they moved like molasses across the Nike compound.

  As they passed an occupied building, she called out for help. Though she saw some faces at the windows, none of the Nike denizens moved to help. Finally, she stopped yelling, and she started flipping off anyone that she saw. Their shamed faces disappeared from the windows and didn't return.

  Behind her, Nathan gasped for air as he pushed to help the ramp along. Wheels, that's what the damn ramp needed, a good set of wheels. After what seemed like hours, they pulled the ramp to the inside of the wall that surrounded the compound. Amanda hopped out of the cart, and though they both knew they weren't strong enough to pick the ramp up on their own, they tried anyway.

  For Amanda, the ramp was an unbudging weight that her mind knew should move, even though it refused to. She saw the cords and tendons in Nathan's neck stretch tight as they both strained to lift the ramp.

  Nathan stopped lifting with a grunt, and when his hands slid free from under the ramp, they were red from the pressure. "It's useless," he said.

  "Fuck that," Amanda said. "Go get someone."

  "Who?" Nathan asked, turning back towards the Nike compound as if to spy someone willing to help.

  "I don't know!" Amanda shouted. "Anyone!"

  Nathan nodded and adjusted his glasses. With his breath still ragged from dragging the ramp to the agreed-upon spot, he headed off to one of the buildings to enlist the help of one of his fellow Nike people.

  Amanda stood looking at the ramp, remembering all those stories about moms lifting buses off their children. She was tempted to squat down and try again, but she knew it would be worthless. She held back the urge to kick the ramp.

  Instead, she maneuvered the golf cart closer to the wall. Without thinking, she clambered onto the flimsy roof of the vehicle. Standing on the top of the slippery plastic, with snowflakes pelting her in the face, she looked up at the edge of the wall. She had to be up there. She had to see them if they were coming so that they knew that the Nike people had abandoned them.

  She raised her arms to grasp the top of the wall, and then she pulled with all of her strength. The metal coping on top of the wall was cold and slick underneath her fingertips, but somehow, she made it to the top. She straddled the slightly icy edge of the wall and peered through the snowfall, trying to find anything moving quicker than the dead. The wall was cold between her legs. She didn't know how long she could sit up there. As long as she had to, she supposed. Maybe the Nike people would come out in a week or two when the snow had thawed and find her frozen to the top of the wall like some sort of modern-day gargoyle. She shuddered in her jacket, rubbing at her fingertips where she had lost some skin in her climb to the top of the barrier.

  ****

  Nathan ran, panic rising up inside him. He needed the soldiers. He needed them to be around. They were probably the only thing keeping him alive. Who knew what Diana and her goons would do if the soldiers weren't around? The threat of their violence had most likely kept him receiving beatings versus being outright murdered.

  His life up until that morning had been a life of casual safety, sometimes punctuated by self-destructive tendencies when he couldn't handle the hypocrisy of the people around him. Those self-destructive tendencies had gotten him beaten and ostracized on the Nike campus. He was essentially persona non grata everywhere he went. The soldiers at least let him be around them, and they'd never tossed him a beating at all. He intended to save them.
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br />   When he walked through the buildings of the Nike campus, inevitably, people would clam up upon noticing his presence. He blamed this all on Diana. She had engineered his ostracism. He was being cut off socially, not for the first time in his life. He knew the signs of when he'd worn out his welcome from years of experience. But this time, it was different. Usually, when he wore out his welcome, he would get fired, or somebody would give him the cold shoulder. Now, he was catching a beating whenever he opened his mouth.

  The fucked-up thing was that Nathan knew the people that were doing it... like really knew them. He had been to some of their houses. He had shared beers with them after work. He didn't know when he had crossed the line with them. Probably when he sided with the soldiers on having Nike kicked out.

  He burst through the doors of one of the buildings on the campus and yelled, "Help!" as loud as he could. Inside, there was no one. He should have known better. The main part of the building was dominated by a pool, and though they had drained it, there was still a hole in the ground that was sixteen-feet deep at one end. This was not the world where one would want to end up at the bottom of a fucking well. The medical expertise on the Nike campus was limited to things like broken bones and headaches. Anything major and it would only be a matter of time until someone suggested they put you out of your misery. The empty pool was a reminder of their fragility. Daredevils didn't live long anymore. There weren't very many people left to put them back together. If you messed yourself up in this world, you'd have to be put down like a horse with a broken leg at a racetrack.

  Nathan had made it halfway down the longest side of the Olympic-sized pool when the doors at the other end burst open to reveal Diana and three other Nike employees, each with a rifle slung over their shoulders. He skidded to a stop when he noticed Diana's clenched jaw.